Hello there. Newbie here. Just install Linux Mint last night on my older Athlon 64 computer with ATI 9600xt. Installed the regular 32 bit version and not the 64bit. Linux works great.

However when my computer boots that GRUB loader shows windows XP on the list but does not let me do anything. It just loads Linux automatically. Can I not choose to boot Windows XP in lieu of Linux at startup?

Yes and nothing happens. Linux has that spinning circle next to it (similar to windows hourglass) and it gives me about 5 seconds. In that time I can't move anything. It seems like it is automatically loading Linux. Is it possible I set up my partitions wrong?

I'm really not sure what to do since I'm not sure what could be causing that. First I would try plugging the keyboard into different jacks, then I would try a regular (old-school keyboard), then I would try to reinstall Mint since it's possible the installation went bad.